Author: Breena Clarke

I'm the author of three historical novels that engage the lives and communities of culturally diverse characters. My novels are set among African American identified people in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. I am a co-founder and co-organizer of The Hobart Festival of Women Writers. I am on the fiction faculty of Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing at The University of Southern Maine.

The Hobart Festival of Women Writers 2018 was held on September 7, 8 &9th Our sixth consecutive year of celebrating the work of women writers in the town of Hobart, New York, The Book Village of the Catskills. It was a glorious weekend! enjoy these photos by Nivea Castro

Be a Participating Writer in The Hobart Festival of Women Writers 2019 September 6, 7, 8. In past years, organizers of The Hobart Festival of Women Writers have chosen Participating Writers through our own recommendations, as well as, from the recommendations of Festival Writers and Festival Participants. Since 2013, 58 diverse women writers have presented…

“And that is why, every year, there is a season
of sadness, the hurricanes, in Great Water. They begin as
thunderstorms off the west coast of our world
They follow the path of the bones.”
— Alexis DeVeaux

Art at Hobart Festival of Women Writers 2018 In Their Own Words is a SPECIAL exhibition of the work of Catksills women artists at The Hobart Community Center as part of the Hobart Festival of Women Writers 2018, September 7, 8, & 9th. The Hobart Community Center, 80 Cornell Avenue, Hobart, New York. In Their Own Words,…

My relationship between poetry and performance: close! Poetry began as an oral art, and provides that tribal gathering we all relish. Mine is a tandem path, rocking back and forth between writing and performance. You don’t study theater without coming away with skills: how timing matters, how to hold an audience, how to be heard (with or without a mike), and yes, how to be still and silent, too.

In the stripping back there is pain and suffering so alive and tangible today, and so I spent a considerable amount of time in tears. Feeling myself resurrecting something that is both my own and ours. And from there, from what is my own and ours, the language came, honest and bare and full of sense.

We tired of being seen through same old lens. We
want history to stop rewinding and repeating. We don’t want to be a part of senseless beatings. We
need our brilliance to be widespread. We got no choice but to move ahead.
–JP Howard